USS Cod and SS William G. Mather tours, Cleveland, OH

With a stellar Myday forecast in the offing, it came time to decide what to do with it. Kyle, Assistant Aerodrome Manager for Jackson County, was also interested in making some form of aerial journey, so we got together on our most favored communications channel (chat messages on Words With Friends) and worked through a few options. The most favored, and thus selected, option was to travel up north to the Land of Cleves, which in modern times goes by the name of Cleveland.

Well, not precisely Cleveland... just the neighborhood around their lakefront airport. Burke-Lakefront Airport, named after the contemporaneous mayor at the time of its inception, is the only surviving lakefront airport (at least within reasonable flying distance of Central Ohio in the slowest of the Van's RV line) having convenient access to the eponymous downtown area adjacent to the airport after the unfortunate demise of Chicago's Meigs Field, which fell victim to a somewhat less visionary mayor, Richard "May He Burn In H3!!" Daley.

The neighborhood around Burke Lakefront offers a number of attractive touristy-type attractions within easy walking distance, including the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Great Lakes Science Center, and a football stadium that serves as the home base for a mediocre NFL team (I jest, I jest!).

We would go to none of those places.

Living in the shadow of those mainstream touristy places are a couple of attractions that are more appealing to the discerning visitor: the USS Cod, and the SS William G. Mather. Devoted readers of this and past blogs penned by yours truly will surely recall my previous visits to the USS Cod and the torrent of photos that are always coincident with those postings (this time will be no different), but the Mather is new territory.

The full story and way too many photos are available here:

http://www.schmetterlingaviation.com/2015/08/the-hunter-hunted.html

There's a $7 landing fee at Burke, but when you consider that parking your car in the same area will cost at least $10, it seems like a pretty good deal.

My dad was an Oiler in the engine room of the Mather back in 1961. He and I took the same hard hat tour a couple of years ago and he lit up like a Christmas Tree when he went on board. He even started telling the tour guides things they didn't know. They used to let folks in the tour groups blow the ships horn, but the compressor quit some time back and the tour guides said no one knows how to fix it. Dad punched me and said "give you and me a couple of days and we'll get it up and running for 'em"! Too bad we were on limited time and couldn't help them our. He and I are fixing a few things the Part 121 side of me didn't like on my plane and once we get her back in the air maybe we can go back up and get the horn working for them. Neat ship and a lot of history in the area.

Thanks for the post, Dad loves the pictures!

And by the way, this is my first post on Vans Air Force.
Doug, you're doing a great job! VAF and its people are the best!

Thank You!

I was there a few years ago ...

Enjoyed the Mather tour bigtime; the submarine was closed for maintenance work at the time.
The R&R Hall of Fame was practically a religious experience for me .... could NOT get enough of it. Because I grew up in the 50s thru 70s, the R&R story chronicles my life. I spent MANY hours over two full days in the R&RHOF. The waterfront area of Cleveland is a ton o' fun!